This knowledge of the gods had been handed down from time
immemorial through the mystery schools, the secret societies, the
Emerald Tablets of Thoth, and even the crystal-like computer wisdom
of the `An-gug stones'?the Tablets of Testimony spoken of earlier.
These are what Gilgamesh, the hero of one of the earliest surviving
works of ancient Sumeria, circa 2900 BC, finds in "an enclosure of
the gods" wherein there was a garden made up entirely of
artificially carved precious stones: "All kinds of thorny Prickly
Bushes were visible, blooming with gemstones; Carnelian bore fruit
hanging in clusters, its vines too beautiful to behold. The foliage
was of lapis lazuli; and grapes, too lush to look at, of. . stones
were made." The partly damaged verses go on to list other kinds of
fruit-bearing trees and the variety of precious stones?white, red
and green?of which they were made. Pure water also runs through the
garden, and in its midst he sees "like a Tree of Life and a Tree of
[Knowledge]. . . that of An-gug stones were made."

Spiritual knowledge comes in layers or levels of achievement and
learning. This is the idea between walking the labyrinth--processing
learning through the various layers of one's being. These are the
same layers opened by the ritual of initiation.

In the chapter Rosslyn Chapel and Spiritual Fulfillment, Tim Wallace-
Murphy & Marilyn Hopkins explore how the Gothic cathedrals fit into
this initiation process. The path to enlightenment they speak not
the true enlightenment of Spirit, but rather that one `outlined' by
the secret societies and mystery schools who built such initiation
temples.

"Rosslyn Chapel is the natural starting point in any rational search
for clues to the methods of initiation used in the late medieval
era. Created as a superbly carved reliquary [strongbox] for the
Grail, which in itself is nothing less than an allegorical
description of the path to enlightenment, it is also the ultimate
pinnacle of the pilgrimage of initiation which was sacred to the
memory and beliefs of the Knights templar, and tradition tells us
that their heirs used a hidden room under the chapel as an
initiation chamber (*much as was used in the Great Pyramids) . . .
"It has long been recognized that the chapel was site of special
veneration and pilgrimage. Folklore recounts how pilgrims in their
thousands traveled there after completing the arduous trek to the
shrine of St. James of Compostela. Tim had suggested in an earlier
work that this may have been because of some relic kept at Rosslyn,
a Black Madonna perhaps, though other authors do not agree with him.
In The Hiram Key this possibility was dismissed (*much more likely
the Ark of the Covenant itself).

"In describing their research into ancient Israel for The Hiram Key
the authors did not mention the esoteric significance of the name
Israel itself. It is held to stand for IS-is, RA and EL-ohim, thus
recording the three divine Egyptian and Canaanite roots of Hebraic
Gnosticism; the very foundation for the hidden streams which pervade
and illuminate Judaeo-Christian spirituality. But why did such
knowledge have to remain hidden?

"The medieval Christian Church was the most intolerant and
repressive authority that Europe has ever experienced. After the
suppression of the templar order, their spiritual heirs had once
again to disguise their initiatory processes under the cloak of
acceptable Christian ritual and practice. What better than for its
novices to make a series of ostensibly devout Christian pilgrimages
to the cathedrals built on the seven sacred sites of the prophetic
configuration?"

Is this any different from walking the seven-layered labyrinth for
the very self-same reason of unfolding ones awareness of the seven-
petalled Lotus, an initiation in and of itself? Such labyrinths
were integral parts of the Gothic Cathedrals constructed by the
Knights Templar and their followers, the most famous being the grand
labyrinth on the floor of Chartres Cathedral.

Initiation is perhaps best defined as an event in which higher
energies are received into the person, permanently changing the
energy frequency and functioning of that personality.

In one of her books, Barbara Clow describes a past lifetime of hers
as "a Druid priest in secret and a Roman priest in public." She
describes going to a sacred site in Avebury, England and walking
along the "ley lines" leading to it that "crackle with magnetic
energy." As an Anasazi shaman in one of my own past lives, we were
able to harness these electro-magnetic ley lines with our
own `alien' technology, to power vehicles that levitated above the
ground and moved by harnessing this energy, like something out of
the TV cartoon Jetson's.

When an energy collector such as the Ark of the Covenant is situated
at a major sacred site along these lines, the power that can be
harnessed is incredible ?enough o wipe out a whole region such as
was described in the destruction of Jericho, or of the ancient city
in India.

Trevor Ravenscroft had often suggested that even before the advent
of Christianity, Celtic pilgrims who worshipped the Earth goddess
journeyed from Iberia to Scotland via the seven planetary oracles,
associating the alignment of the spirit senses within themselves to
the corresponding alignment of the earth chakras. The sequence of
sites corresponds to that of the planets in our solar system; the
Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. There was
no arbitrary choice involved in which seven cathedrals were an
integral part of this apocalyptic configuration in stone.